Oscar Beat TIFF 2013: Darkly Comic AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY Offers Up Multiple Awards-Worthy Performances

With regards to awards prospects, a common theme of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival has been outstanding performances.  Chiwetel Ejiofor is incredible in 12 Years a Slave, Sandra Bullock basically carries the enormous weight of Gravity all by herself, and Kate Winslet’s work in Labor Day is beautifully understated.  Many have been looking forward to director John Wells’ adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play August: Osage County for a while now, but the darkly comic film just premiered at TIFF and not only delivered with a mesmerizing lead performance by Meryl Streep, but the entire ensemble is simply fantastic. Hit the jump for my rundown of the Oscar prospects for August: Osage County in this special TIFF edition of Oscar Beat. The story finds the women of the Weston family reconvening in their hometown in northeast Oklahoma following a tragedy, and chaos ensues as the bitter, drug addicted matriarch (Meryl Streep) sets out to further damage every single familial relationship she has left.  Adapting a play for the big screen is a very difficult endeavor, and despite capturing the biting wit and darker elements of Letts’ screenplay, director John Wells’ August: Osage County still feels very much like a play.  That’s not exactly a bad thing though, as Streep and Julia Roberts turn in noteworthy lead performances that are buoyed by a truly phenomenal ensemble cast. Streep is at once hilarious, terrifying, and sad, and she unsurprisingly takes this meaty character and absolutely runs with it.  Roberts does her best work in ...